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Sunday Comics: Dead Island One of the writers of Portal 2, Erik Wolpaw, gave a talk last week at NYU’s Game centre. You may have become aware of this because of the number of stories that ushered forth from the talk, like Wolpaw’s passion for Rick the Adventure Sphere or why Chell doesn’t speak. Or perhaps you were one of the dozens of people who were forced to stand outside the at-capacity lecture hall.
Our friends at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, the PC gaming partisans, uncovered a bit of a snarl in the Wikipedia page for now-primordeal gaming protoblog, Old Man Murray. An overzealous – or perhaps simply vindictive – Wikipedia editor had deemed the entry about OMM “unnotable” and fit for deletion. But within 24 hours, RPS had mustered such overwhelming support from the gaming industry (Valve’s Gabe Newell, Linden Lab’s Rob Humble, former Gamespot honcho Greg Kasavin, et al.) that the Wikipedia entry for Old Man Murray was rightfully restored.
Compared to the number of funny movies, the number of funny games is quite low. Good comedy is hard!
Kim Swift and Erik Wolpaw, two of the key developers on Portal, gave GDC attendees a behind the scenes look at The Orange Box hit, focusing on the process of integrating narrative and design. The two also showed early and, by their own admission, failed, version’s of the game’s final boss fight with GLaDOS, the talkative, ever present artificial intelligence. They highlighted three attempts at making a successful boss battle, driving home the fact that ample playtesting brought them to the incinerator battle they ultimately settled on.
